Kukla's Korner Hockey

Lupul, speaking at the Maple Leafs’ Etobicoke practice rink while his teammates prepared to play the Rangers in Manhattan on Wednesday, said that now, nearly a week after the collision, he can’t be sure when he’ll return to action. He said he “didn’t want to get into” the details of his current symptoms, but Wednesday marked the second straight day he’d stayed off the ice. Instead, he spent an afternoon honing his wrist shot and backhand in the team’s dryland shooting gallery. Getting back on the blades Thursday remains a possibility, said Lupul, who last partook in drills during Monday’s morning skate. Nothing is for sure, but at least this was something.

“If I was having bad symptoms, I would be home resting instead of this,” Lupul said. “It’s truly a day-to-day thing, just wake up in the morning and see how I’m feeling, how I’m progressing. There’s really no reason for me to rush right now. I just want to make sure I’m back at 100 per cent.”

If it sounds an awful lot like he is suffering the effects of a certain C-word, the club has not termed Lupul’s injury a concussion. Lupul, for the record, assumes he has endured precisely that.

“Yeah,” he said Wednesday, when asked if he believes he suffered a concussion against the Flyers. “I mean, no one’s really said that word to me. But I definitely didn’t sprain my ankle.”